Hosted by: Ian Robinson

The fundamental aim of heterogeneous catalysis research is to understand mechanisms at the nanoparticle level, and then to design and synthesize catalysts with desired active sites. In this regard, the in situ/operando characterization of defects is crucial as they are preferential catalytic sites for the reaction occurrence. In this seminar I will talk about the main part of the work developed during my PhD: the investigation of the morphology and structure evolution of gold nano-catalysts supported on titanium dioxide. Those catalytic materials were evaluated for the model CO oxidation reaction, chosen for its environmental relevance and "simplicity" to be reproducible within our X-ray imaging study. We used the Bragg Coherent Diffraction Imaging technique to follow in situ the 3D morphology changes under catalytic reaction conditions. We correlated the 3D displacement field and strain distribution of the gold nanoparticles to the catalytic properties of the material. In particular, for a 120 nm gold nanoparticle, we quantified under working conditions the adsorbate-induced surface stress on the gold nanocrystal, which leads to restructuration and defects identified as a nanotwin network.